"This paper examines the causes of the observed increase in the average duration of unemployment over the past thirty … in the generosity and coverage of unemployment insurance. We find that changes in the composition of the labor force and … institutional changes can only partially account for the longer duration of unemployment. We construct a job search model and …

The acceleration of productivity since 1995 has prompted a debate over whether the economy's underlying growth rate … identify variables other than productivity - namely consumption and labor compensation - to help estimate trend productivity … direction. In addition, we find that productivity data alone provide insufficient evidence of regime changes; corroborating …

has not been a good predictor of whether the unemployment rate at the end of the expansion following a shift was higher or …